Eight Forty-Eight

A law revived by Cook County allows unclaimed bodies to be donated to science.

Oct. 04, 2011

The Cook County medical examiner and the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois – the organization that supplies Illinois medical schools with cadavers for study – revived a 125-year-old law that allows unclaimed bodies to be donated to science. Callum Ross and Paul Dudek of the AGA joins Eight Forty-Eight to discuss what this means for medical science in Illinois.Then, the experimental film series, Conversations at the Edge, celebrates its 10th season this year. Eight Forty-Eight speaks with series curator Amy Beste. And the programLandscape Archive screens films that examine how ideas, events and cultures have been recorded in the terrain. Jonathan Miller reviews this collection of shorts, which screens Thursday night at the Gene Siskel Film Center as part of the film series, Conversations at the Edge.

Although many prefer not to think about it, a critical part of medical knowledge involves research with the dead. Last year, Cook County reached an agreement to donate unclaimed bodies to Illinois medical schools.

Landscape as Archive is a program of three short films exploring the way an actual landscape can be a repository for history – or even ideas. It plays at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Thursday, Oct. 6 as part of the Conversations at the Edge series.

Digital technologies brought big changes to filmmaking over the past decade. For those on the experimental edge of the medium, change could feel like it was coming at breakneck speed, butConversations at the Edge provides a place to catch up.